The Incarnate
by gothicorca1895
Summary: The dead have an afterlife; the freed are reborn. The sequel to The Forgotten, set twenty years after the Coraline movie. Movieverse.
1. Prelude

_A/N -- OH HAI PEOPLE. I have been gone for a looooooooong time, haven't I? My faithful readers deserve an explanation, so here it is._

_As you know, earlier this year I finished my first Coraline multi-chaptered fanfiction, **The Forgotten**. Then, during the summer, I attempted to press ahead with two other Coraline fanfictions: **The Abandoned **and **Stitches Extended**. Unfortunately, neither one of those fine pieces of writing ever came to completion, or even fruition. So don't expect them to be updated._

_But recently, I had a dream (literally) that gave me the idea for the one thing that my Coraline fandom never had...a fan character._

_This is the sequel to The Forgotten. (I KNOW I SAID A LONG TIME AGO THAT IT WOULD NEVER HAVE A SEQUEL, BUT THINGS CHANGE.) If you've read The Fogotten, great! Come on it. If not, shame on you! Go read it, now! Or, if you don't want to, that's your decision, really...BUT YOU WILL BECOME HORRIBLY CONFUSED SHORTLY._

_Actually, everybody's going to be horribly confused after they read the first chapter. Oh, well. It will make sense soon enough..._

_Okay, I'm done with this rambling note. (First-chapter notes are always rambling.) So sit back, get your reading glasses on, and enter the world of **The Incarnate**..._

* * *

The spirit wandered far and wide, everywhere and anywhere, unaffected by the winds and weather. It saw everything there was to see, and then it saw everything else. It was invisible and intangible, and it went unnoticed. In its emotionless non-mind, it felt content.

For awhile.

An immeasurable length of time later, the spirit was lonely. It had sometimes felt this way before, and whenever this occurred, it had gone to look in on the friends it had known in life. But these former companions, who had promised to keep the spirit in their hearts, forgot it. They grew up and changed things, and it was unable to communicate with them, to remind them that it had once been real.

The spirit began to think that it might like to have a body. It HAD had a body, once, but the form had been bound and chained by another, higher being. Its happiness had come when it had been freed from that influence. But now it desired, above all, to become solid again.

So the spirit searched for a budding new life, and found one. It took hold of its opportunity, and gave up complete freedom for a more earthly way.

For a long time, all was dark.

Then, soon enough, the spirit came back into the world – but now, it was not a spirit at all.

It was an incarnate…


	2. Blank pages

_A/N -- I'm assuming the reason I only got one review for the last chapter because everyone read it, saw how short and vague it was, went "WTF?" and left. Maybe I'll be getting more feedback this chapter. However, be forewarned that this story will take a while to get into an area you recognize..._

* * *

Two hours after the Corolla had departed from the parking lot of the Oregon Children's Home, she was still staring at the empty page of the sketchbook on her lap…

Tabitha hadn't said a word since she'd left the orphanage, and why should she? She barely spoke at the orphanage, or before that, at home. Whenever Claire or Dominick had focused on the rearview mirror with the intent of sparking some garishly cheerful conversation, she'd leaned back against the upholstery in a deliberate parody of sleep, or pretended to be drawing.

But her page remained blank.

Tabitha was twelve. She had turned twelve three weeks ago while in the custody of The State. Eight months prior to this unwilling voyage in a cramped old Toyota, some social workers had "rescued" her from her "abusive" mother. But what had her mother done to deserve that label? She just got a little…_angry_, sometimes, that was all. Often for no good reason. But didn't everyone?

"We're coming close now, Tabitha," came the singsong falsetto of Claire's voice, pronouncing Tabitha's name, "Tuh-bith-uh."

Tabitha scowled, glowering as she slumped back down in the backseat. "It's TAH-bitha," she corrected angrily. Her so-called abusive mother had known how to pronounce her name.

Sometimes, when she was sulking in her room after one of the frequent outbursts and painfully caressing the places where new bruises were apt to form, Tabitha pondered the thought that her bad relationship with her mother had begun when she was named. After all, her name led to her being coined Tabby and Tabby Cat when she didn't even _like _cats, didn't really care for animals of any sort. But she would not have complained had her situation been the same as it was then…had she been _at home _now.

A battered vintage suitcase was leaning against the opposite window, clattering from the vibrations of this road less travelled. She yanked it towards her and threw open the catch – unlocked, of course. Tabitha gazed glumly at one extra outfit, one pair of slapdash pajamas, and a reduced assortment of age-grayed undergarments. They – the social workers – hadn't allowed her to keep most of her belongings. She still had her decrepitly obsolete MP3 player (only four gigs, and no video capabilities besides!); she still had her hardbound sketchbook (already half-full); plus some taped-together paperback sci-fi and horror novels, stamped with ominous "DISCARD" labels, urban rescue from the orphanage library. All of these personal possessions were arranged atop her meager wardrobe.

They'd permitted her to hang on to her viola, too. Its case was wedged between the front seat and her grungy sneakers.

It wasn't fair. Just when she'd grown accustomed to life with her mother, she'd been tossed into the Home, and when THAT life was beginning to feel normal, they'd thrown her into the custody of these occult-worshipping dipsticks! Claire, the part-time fortune teller-tarot car-palm reader, and Dominick, the undertaker. The freaking _undertaker_, for God's sake. It wasn't her fault that her mom had a temper and her dad was dead or in the army or somewhere else where he couldn't take her in.

It just wasn't _fair_!

"Here we are!" exclaimed Dominick, and the Corolla bumped up a rutted dirt driveway that carved a brown line in the hill. "Our Pink Palace. Our home."

"Hmmph," grumbled Tabitha.

This would be her home…when hell froze over.

She released the door catch and shoved it open with her foot, retracted her seatbelt strap with a click of the stiff square button, collected her things. She was a scrawny-limbed girl, small for her age and underweight, almost sickly-looking – yet she insisted on bringing her luggage to the porch unassisted.

Then she took a good look at the Pink Palace, and her eyebrows arched up in bewilderment.

Had she seen this place before? Tabitha experienced these obscure moments of déjà-vu often, usually wondering if it was a twinge of memory from a dream. The Pink Palace was similar to so many of the other rambling Victorian mansions of the area, which she'd passed on her journey here. But she had fuller memories of this, the complete layout of the house constructed in her mind. Perhaps she had been brought here as a young child? It didn't seem probable, but what other logical explanation could there be?

Claire and Dominick were still huddled at the car, whispering. They were most certainly whispering; they made sure that they were whispering. But Tabitha could hear them.

"Touchy girl," Dominick mumbled.

"They warned us about this," Claire pointed out. "They said she would be unlikely to open up at first."

"But she's so…I dunno, _quiet_."

"They warned us," Claire repeated. "PTS, you know. Post-traumatic stress. And I think there was something about denial on the adoption bio as well…"

"Could be it…"

Tabitha scowled. PTS, denial, that was why she was so quiet and sad – they'd heaped that crap upon her at the orphanage, too. But they didn't know anything. They didn't understand. So WHAT if she didn't think in words? She had her art, had her music. Had alternate means of communication. So WHAT if she didn't talk much? She hadn't yet found anyone much worth talking to, anyway. Her "foster parents" were no different than anyone she'd encountered since she'd been taken from her mother. They all went on about how her glorious day of adoption would be a blooming flower, a new leaf, a blank page.

But had they even considered that Tabitha, maybe, didn't WANT a blank page? For her hardbound sketchbook was saturated with barely-begun drawings, rather than complete works of art, which came few and far between.

Blank pages were always harder to work with.

To her left, she detected a faint sound, like a noise of curiosity emanating from the back of an unknown throat. "Another child?" came a voice wafted on the humid air, which no regular person would have been able to hear.

Tabitha turned around, intent on telling the mystery speaker that maybe she wasn't much for talking, but she sure as hell could listen.

But there was no one there but a scrawny black cat with a torn ear, stretching luxuriantly on the sign for the Pink Palace Apartments by the light of the cloud-shrouded sun.


End file.
